Affiliation:
1. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California
Abstract
ABSTRACT
Mycobacterium marinum
is a pathogenic mycobacterial species that is closely related to
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
and causes tuberculosis-like disease in fish and frogs. We infected the fruit fly
Drosophila melanogaster
with
M. marinum
. This bacterium caused a lethal infection in the fly, with a 50% lethal dose (LD
50
) of 5 CFU. Death was accompanied by widespread tissue damage.
M. marinum
initially proliferated inside the phagocytes of the fly; later in infection, bacteria were found both inside and outside host cells. Intracellular
M. marinum
blocked vacuolar acidification and failed to colocalize with dead
Escherichia coli
, similar to infections of mouse macrophages.
M. marinum
lacking the
mag24
gene were less virulent, as determined both by LD
50
and by death kinetics. Finally, in contrast to all other bacteria examined, mycobacteria failed to elicit the production of antimicrobial peptides in
Drosophila
. We believe that this system should be a useful genetically tractable model for mycobacterial infection.
Publisher
American Society for Microbiology
Subject
Infectious Diseases,Immunology,Microbiology,Parasitology
Cited by
149 articles.
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